Directors of WHO and PAHO Inaugurate Primary Care Meeting
Buenos Aires, August 17, 2007 (PAHO)—The Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. Margaret Chan, opened an international primary care meeting here, saying "We cannot allow millions of people worldwide to die and keep on dying from treatable diseases."
From the left: WHO Director-General Margaret Chan, Argentina's Health Minister Ginés González García and PAHO Director Dr. Mirta Roses Periago (Photo by Manuel F. Calvit)
Speaking at the official opening of the "30/15" primary health care conference here this week with PAHO Director Dr. Mirta Roses, Dr. Chan said, "Problems like poverty, ignorance, unhealthy environments and a lack of human resources are fundamental factors in this crisis. It is all nations' responsibility to overcome these."
She noted that on the 30th anniversary of the historic Alma Ata Primary Health Care declaration, "In spite of our involvement, we continue to lag behind." Health care is not reaching the poorest sectors at the necessary scale, she noted, and infant mortality will not fall until health reaches all. "If certain products such as soft drinks can reach every corner of the planet, why can't mosquito nets to prevent diseases?" she asked.
PAHO's Dr. Roses assured that health "is central for development, for equity and for the survival of society." She noted that the primary health care principles of Alma Ata continue to be important and the new challenge is to apply them to the changed realities of today, taking into account that inequities have grown.
Link of Interest
Pan American Journal of Public Health. Special Issue on Primary Health Care in the Americas
"Alma Ata was an appeal for constructing health and after that pioneering declaration several meetings have raised the same summons. Now, we must analyze how primary health care is linked with promotion, how an inclusive and sustainable social policy is developed," said Dr. Roses. "I hope that there is not a competition between concepts. We have many young people here who represent the third generation of the Declaration of Alma Ata, who will have to carry on public health in the 21st century," she added.
Experts and officials from 60 countries are participating in the "30/15" meeting, which marks the 30 years since the Alma-Ata declaration and the halfway point to attaining the Millennium Development Goals to achieve notable improvements in health, education, and poverty by the year 2015.
In addition to the directors of WHO and PAHO, and the former Director-General of WHO, Dr. Halfdan Mahler, Argentina's Health Minister, Dr. Ginés González García; and Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana, headed the official inauguration of the Buenos Aires meeting this week.
"I feel profoundly moved because in addition to being the director of the Pan American Health Organization, I am Argentinean," said Dr. Roses. "It makes proud to have to the director of the World Health Organization come to our Region in her first year in office,"
"I am the new girl in the neighborhood," Dr. Chan told participants. "During my campaign, I had to travel to many countries for my candidacy, and I met 50 or 60 Ministers of Health. And they all spoke to me about the importance of primary care."
Dr. González García said it was necessary to address the evolution of primary health care, since "the world continues to accumulate wealth as never before but also there have never been so many inequalities. We have to advance toward a fundamental change in the strategy to distribute health. The systems are not at their best moment, but the policies implemented have yielded good results in recent years."
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Link of interest:
PAHO, founded in 1902, works with all the countries of the Americas to improve the health and raise the quality of life of their peoples. It also serves as the Regional Office for the Americas of WHO.
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